In an online used car information search system, generally a desired used car (vehicle) is searched for by inputting a name of car type (a maker name and a car name), a price, a model year and a mileage as search conditions.
In a case where a person wishing to purchase a used car searches for used car information, the price is an element essential to the search. A market price (including a ratio to a price of a new car) largely differs depending on the car type.
Further, a market price of the specified type of car can fluctuate widely depending on its popularity. Namely, an image of the car type is formed by a new model after the existing model has fully changed, and hence, if the new model fails to gain a good reputation, the former model has a tendency of likewise decreasing in popularity.
If the prospective purchaser tries to search for the used car information by utilizing the online used car information search system in order to purchase a used car, this person does not recognize which level the market price thereof is set at, and is therefore unable to search for it efficiently. This problem becomes more acute for prospective purchasers who are unaccustomed to using the used car information search system.
Further, high-class cars have a wide range of price zones, and hence there are many cases where a price zone inputted as a search condition is not necessarily the absolute condition. In such a case, there arises a problem in which the prospective purchaser fails to identify a used car that would be of interest to this person because of a deviation from the inputted price zone.
A search for a general commercial article such as an electric product or item of clothing involves a thought process such as “this is a desired article, how much is this article?” and so on. In contrast, a search for a used car involves a different thought process wherein the prospective purchaser desires to examine a used car (car type) priced at a particular price level to determine whether the person wants to purchase it.
Accordingly, there may be taken a scheme of adopting a commercial article search system disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 10-149392, wherein a price zone is set for every category of the articles, and a prospective purchaser is made to select the price zone concerned. In the case of the used car described above, however, the market prices fluctuate widely, and it is not therefore effective to preset the price zones.